


Left Behind

by Huggle



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angry Sam, Angst, Emotionally Hurt Dean, Emotionally Hurt Sam, Gen, Guilty Sam, Season/Series 08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 21:46:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6874867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huggle/pseuds/Huggle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam isn't sure how long he's supposed to let Dean punish him but there's a limit to how much he can take.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left Behind

Dean wanted an explanation, Sam knew that. His brother had stood there, eyes wide, waiting for Sam to say something that would set it all to rights. Crush the theory that was gaining ground in Dean’s head that he had in fact been abandoned by his brother.

Because it couldn’t be that, right? They always came after each other – it didn’t matter where, or how long it took, or what they had to go through. 

No one got left behind.

But Sam had nothing – when Dean surmised the situation, so brutally, with so few words, he couldn’t counter it. Putting it like that made it seem exactly like how it had been, and his paltry defence – the _agreement_ – was just that. A feeble excuse that stabbed deep into Dean, and the look of hurt Sam got in return did the same to him.

After that, Sam knew he was going to lose Dean. Even if he stayed, there would always be this wedged between them. Dean would never forgive him. He’d never leave him, but they were hardly brothers anymore. Not when one of them felt as if he’d been betrayed so callously and by the person he most looked to in the world for solace, help, protection.

More than once, Sam thought he had it; he’d brought every inch of focus he had onto his thought processes following the battle with Dick Roman – not that he could reasonably call what he did next _thought_ – but when he turned to Dean, ready to really tell him what had been going on in his head….

Dean had given him a look, and Sam knew then it was too late. Nothing he said could counter what had already been said, or the wall that had started to build between them.

All Sam had was words. Dean had facts. A year spent in Purgatory, helped to escape by a vampire. Then finding his brother not feverishly working on a rescue, but having moved on and living a new life.

Not just living it, settled in it. 

To Dean, it must have looked as if Sam had started over the minute he’d walked out of Leviathan HQ.

He couldn’t find a way to tell Dean that in some ways, he’d never left.

**

Eventually, he cracked. There was only so much he could take from Dean; the anger, the hostility, the jabs. He got it, he understood already – he was a terrible brother, he’d given up on Dean way too soon, he was the same Sam who had fought with John over Stanford, then abandoned Dean to their father so he could have a life he didn’t even stick.

Pushed too far, he’d started to wonder if Dean’s reaction was simply out of jealousy. Sam had what it took to move on, had made two attempts that had been partially successful and ruined only by circumstance. Dean couldn’t. He was programmed too well; this was the only life he was ever going to have, and he envied Sam the ability to find something in this world that didn’t revolve around salt lines, fake IDs and stitching up each other’s wounds in filthy motel rooms.

In some sorry part of him, he knew that wasn’t true, but it was the only weapon – the only defence – he had and so like a Winchester he came out fighting with it.

It went as well as he would have expected if he’d actually thought before he spoke. 

By the time he was done, he’d told Dean that if he mentioned Purgatory again, if he _whined_ about it anymore – _whined_ , Jesus – then Sam would be gone. Because he wasn’t prepared to listen to Dean’s shit that wasn’t so much about abandonment in Monster Hell as it was about the fact that Sam had tried again to find something outside hunting.

And had succeeded again, at least for a while.

Dean’s only true attempt had been a fucked up arrangement with Lisa, one whole year he’d spent praying to Castiel as an indication of just how much he’d moved on.

As soon as he mentioned their angel, Sam wanted to wire his own jaw shut. Dean shut down on him, the hurt from before nothing to the glimpse of raw pain that was there and gone as his brother stepped back from him like it was the last time.

“Dean,” he started, an ache burning its way through his chest, but all he got was Dean’s back as he opened the trunk of the Impala and tossed his duffel at him without even a look.

He could only stand there and watch as the car screeched away.

This time, he was the one left behind.

**Author's Note:**

> So, written as a one shot to help get over my writer's block. 
> 
> Thank you to my chum for helping me over it - you know who you are! :)


End file.
